Category: Media

Charles Glasser – 

The Washington Post: We have to destroy the First Amendment in order to save it. In what has to be the most blockheaded analysis I’ve read in years, The Post ran a story this afternoon titled “Misinformation research is buckling under GOP legal attacks.”

Of course the conservatives and libertarians are leading the charge. It’s the fight against government coercing, cajoling or even cooperating with publishers (electronic and otherwise) to suppress right-leaning views.

To paraphrase James Carville: “It’s the Constitution, Stupid.”

The people who want to censor the right have put a new dress on their pig.  The Washington Post painted it thusly:

“The escalating campaign — led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans in Congress and state government — has cast a pall over programs that study not just political falsehoods but also the quality of medical information online.”

“See, we have a First Amendment right to figure out how to suppress others’ speech. We’re the real victims here.”

As you may remember, as The Hill reported on Missouri v. Biden:

“A federal appellate court concluded Sept. 8 that multiple White House, surgeon general, FBI and CDC officials likely breached the fine line separating permissible government persuasion and jawboning from illicit “coercion and significant encouragement” when they repeatedly — and often successfully — lobbied social-media companies “to remove disfavored content and accounts from their sites.”

At that oral argument, Judge Don Willett had no problem with federal agencies publicly criticizing what they judged false or dangerous ideas. But that wasn’t how Biden’s winged monkeys compelled submission: “Here you have government in secret, in private, out of the public eye, relying on . . . subtle strong-arming and veiled or not-so-veiled threats” said the Judge.

Willett expressed his disgust with the mafia-like tactics of the Biden administration: “That’s a really nice social-media platform you’ve got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.”

 

O’Keefe’s new organization seems to be doing just fine.

Project Veritas Is Dead. Cause Of Death? Pushing Out James O’Keefe.

Project Veritas Suspends All Operations Amid Devastating Layoffs and Fundraising Struggles.

Project Veritas, the conservative organization founded by James O’Keefe, suspended all operations on Wednesday after another round of layoffs, Mediaite has learned.

According to a letter titled “Reduction in Force” that was sent to Project Veritas staffers by HR director Jennifer Kiyak on Wednesday, the organization is putting all operations on pause amidst severe financial woes.

“In the interest of preserving the possible future existence of Project Veritas we need to put operations on pause and, as communicated since the Spring, another Reduction in Force (“RIF”) is necessary,” Kiyak wrote.

Six staffers were laid off from the embattled organization this week, sources said, including all remaining journalists and one development associate. One former Project Veritas staffer said just 11 people remain on the non-profit’s payroll, including CEO Hannah Giles.

Kiyak wrote in the letter that the group cannot “carry the present staff count any longer” and reminded those being laid off of their nondisclosure agreements.

O’Keefe, a right-wing activist who gained fame and notoriety for his sting operations against liberal groups, launched Project Veritas in 2010. He left the organization earlier this year amid allegations of improper spending of funds on personal luxuries. He was replaced by Giles as CEO, who has overseen the rapid decline of the once well-funded group that has in recent months struggled with layoffs, the resignations of board members, and fundraising struggles.

Earlier this month, Mediaite reported on an internal meeting during which Giles said the organization was “bankrupt.”

One of the journalists let go in the bloodletting on Wednesday is Bobby Harr, a former lead investigative reporter with Project Veritas. Harr told Mediaite he was “confused” when he was officially laid off on a phone call with Giles and Kiyak Wednesday afternoon – because he had already been let go from the organization last month.

“I was confused by this as my job was actually cut during the first round of layoffs while I was on medical leave,” he said. “I was locked out of my work phone and laptop as of that day and my paychecks stopped.”

Christian Hartsock, the former chief investigative journalist at Project Veritas who was laid off in August, said he was shocked to learn the organization was still running.

“I have no idea what ‘operations’ there are to suspend,” Hartsock told Mediaite.

Giles, he said, “canned the entire production staff of a production company, and the entire journalist leadership staff of a journalism company over a month ago. So what exact ‘operations’ has she been continuing with remaining donor money — given for the sole purpose of journalism production — for the past month?”

Harr said the collapse of Project Veritas has not come as a surprise given the events of recent weeks.

“Suspending operations is one of those things that we all knew was coming after the mass layoffs occurred, but still cut like a knife when it officially happened,” Harr said. “Lack of funding and poor management amplified the damage that James O’Keefe already did to the organization prior to the days of Hannah Giles, who then delivered the final blow.”

O’Keefe’s attorney Jeffrey Lichtman told Mediaite in a statement: “It appears that in the few months since Project Veritas ousted James, it continued to spend money at the same rate, blowing through the many millions of dollars James had previously raised for it — despite PV having no new sources of fundraising. This is highly suspect and we would welcome a full audit of PV’s finances to learn where that money was actually spent.”

Harr expressed disappointment with the mismanagement of the organization he spent more than three years working for.

“I was provided no severance pay,” he said. “The organization used to thrive and prosper. It’s truly sad to see what can happen to great opportunities with a surplus of resources when the wrong people are in power.”

Random Thoughts on Hunter Biden, Domestic Violence, and Disarming Those Who Haven’t Been Convicted of a Crime.

One of the most entertaining aspects of Hunter Biden being indicted on three gun-related charges due to his drug use is the reaction of those on the left side of the political spectrum. They’re screaming that given how few people are prosecuted for lying on 4473 forms, the only reason he’s been charged is his prominent father.

Note that the Venn diagram of the people who are making this argument and those who blew a blood vessel when a man whose conviction was overturned for gun possession while under a domestic violence restraining order is almost a perfect circle. Yet the legal principles are virtually the same.

In the domestic violence case, US v. Rahimi, the target is a certified scumbag who’d been involved in at least five prior crimes involving firearms and had beaten the hell out of his girlfriend. Zackey Rahimi was the subject of a domestic violence restraining order which prohibited him from possessing a firearm and had been convicted of violating that order.

When the Fifth Circuit circuit overturned his conviction based on the lack of a history or tradition in this country of voiding the gun rights of people who hadn’t been convicted of a crime, the reaction was as if they’d OK’d human sacrifice, dogs living with cats…you know mass hysteria.

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DHS Awards $20 Million To Program That Flags Americans As Potential “Extremists” For Their Online Speech

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded 34 grants to as many organizations, worth a total of $20 million, whose role will be to undergo training in order to flag potential online “extremist” speech of Americans.

The money will be spent from the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) grant program for fiscal year 2023, while the recipients include police, mental health providers, universities, churches and school districts.

According to DHS, this program (administered by its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, CP3, and for some reason, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA) is the only federal one of its kind whose goal is “helping local communities develop and strengthen their capabilities in combating targeted violence and terrorism.”

Those given the money from the grants fund are expected to develop prevention programming at the community level that would stop “targeted violence and terrorism,” as well as come up with innovative prevention ideas, and “identify prevention best practices that can be replicated in communities nationwide.”

In announcing and explaining the need for such spending, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas cited the Jacksonville shooting. As he remarked while justifying the awarding of grants, the event was racially motivated, and – “[it] made painfully clear, targeted violence and terrorism can impact any community, anywhere.”

DHS claims that the “current” environment is one of heightened – and lethal – threat, based on ideology or personal grievances of “lone offenders and small groups.”

The DHS announcement came on the anniversary of 9/11, but it showed that the focus is now on Americans rather than some foreign terrorist threat (or even foreign terrorist gangs in the habit of “invading” US soil).

And the way the terrorist threat is defined here looks more like a drive to suppress dissent to dominant narratives pushed by the government and large traditional and social media who work in concert with the federal authorities.

Specifically, what opponents of such policy single out as possible reasons to be branded a violent extremists or (domestic) terrorist could be disagreeing, and expressing that opinion online on anything from Covid, vaccines, gun rights, gender and LGBTQ policies, the war in Ukraine, or immigration.

MEDIA WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO BLAME FIREARM INDUSTRY

By Larry Keane

There’s peril when media sets out to confirm a narrative instead of reporting facts. Whether it’s criminal violence in America perpetrated by a deranged lunatic, or by violent drug cartels in countries beyond our borders, some media outlets will find the flawed logic to argue it is American companies that should be punished.

This results in a disservice to readers and erodes public trust not just in their subjects but also in the Fourth Estate.

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The DailyKos (a rabid anti-gun pub) gets pwned by one of its own

Citizens Have An Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms Unconnected With Service In a Militia

The Second Amendment speaks of two separate groups the Militia and the People. If the right to keep and bear arms was meant ONLY to apply to the militia it would read “The right of Militia members to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Or, it would read “The power of the States to maintain armed militias shall not be infringed.”

It reads “The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”  It calls for a “Well-regulated Militia” and not a well regulated populace, and all other references to “The People” in the Bill of Rights are also rights of individual citizens.

 The Federal government, the States and their officials hold powers not rights.  For example, Amendment IV “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”  Amendment X “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Article. I. Section. 1. “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Article. II. Section. 1. “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Note that they read powers and not rights.

Held:

1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for
traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
Pp. 2–53.

(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but
does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative
clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it
connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.

This decision wasn’t reached in a vacuum.  The vast majority of law review articles dealing with the Second Amendment conclude that it protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.  In fact, when Dr. Lawrence Tribe, the widely published Constitutional Law scholar, author of the Constitutional law textbook that is standard in many if not most of our nation’s low schools, and strong supporter of gun control, announced that he would conduct a study of the Second Amendment.

Citizen disarmament zealots, their organizations, their media allies, and their apologists were elated for they believed that at last a well respected Constitutional law scholar would finally proclaim that the Second Amendment applies only to the Militia and not individual citizens.

In the end they were disappointed.  Like the Supreme Court Dr. Tribe determined that the framers of the Constitution intended that the Second Amendment confers the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms unconnected with service in a Militia.

The Washington Post Calls for Reducing Free Speech to Improve Democracy

In very post-2016 fashion, The Washington Post last week published an article implying democracy might require curbs on freedom of speech. This unsettling approach suggests concerns around “misinformation” on social networks supersede freedom of speech, a move that has elicited intense debate and, rightly so; criticism.

In what appears to be a shift in public discourse towards further censorship, the widely-read Washington Post article critiqued Elon Musk’s reinstatement of former President Donald Trump on the social media platform, X, previously known as Twitter.

The article suggested that the proliferation of what it calls “political misinformation” disturbs democracy, sparking concern amongst proponents of free speech.

The perspective is reflected in the reporting by The Washington Post journalists Naomi Nix and Sarah Ellison. However, their piece lacks critical analysis of the ambiguity surrounding the term “misinformation” and fails to address the consequential question of how to moderate content in situations where politicians’ statements are arguably false or misleading.

The article’s glaring omission of any mention of the First Amendment – a core pillar of American democracy fostering media freedoms – also raised eyebrows amidst media and legal circles.

The Washington Post reporters worryingly suggest the retreat of social media companies from combating online falsehoods could impact the 2024 presidential election. They fault Musk, along with Facebook and YouTube, for taking a step back from reining in what they call misleading claims and conspiracy theories.

Nix and Ellison also critique X for permitting Tucker Carlson’s President Trump interview, which they deem as a platform for Trump to reiterate his allegations about the 2020 election. They contend that social media should only host political content if its accuracy can be proven, posing an unrealistic expectation that conceals underlying issues of censorship under the pretext of curbing “misleading” or “hateful” speech.

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Well, I generally believe that when government officials don’t want us to know something, it’s because they fear we would think or act in ways they wouldn’t like if we knew it.

It’s democracy in the dark without Nashville shooter manifesto’s release.

“Democracy Dies in Darkness” is the (sometimes ironic) slogan of The Washington Post.

But it’s also a fair description of what’s happening in Tennessee, as the state Legislature is being called to a special session even as local and federal officials withhold information that might be critical to its decision-making.

Gov. Bill Lee ordered the special session to begin Aug. 21 in response to a March 27 mass shooting in which three adults and three children at the Covenant School, a Christian school in Nashville’s Green Hills neighborhood, were killed.

The Nashville Tennessean article refers only to “a shooter.”

The shooter was a female-to-male transgender shooter named Audrey Hale, aged 28, who left a manifesto before being killed by police.

Hale had chosen to identify as a man, using the pronouns he/him.

The manifesto included detailed plans put together over months to shoot up the school, according to reports just after the shooting from police who had seen it.

Unfortunately, they’re the only ones who have seen it.

Local and federal authorities with access to the manifesto have refused to make its contents public.

Though Hale sent an Instagram message to a friend just before the shooting, saying, “One day this will make more sense. I’ve left more than enough evidence behind,” we haven’t seen that evidence.

Vivek Ramaswamy, running third in the GOP presidential primary, recently called for the manifesto’s release. He characterizes the government position as “stonewalled silence.”

Well, I generally believe that when government officials don’t want us to know something, it’s because they fear we would think or act in ways they wouldn’t like if we knew it.

They seldom keep things secret that would make them look good.

Instead it’s usually something that would reflect badly on them or someone they’re protecting.

What could that be in this case? I don’t know, and they seem determined to keep it that way.

But beyond that, the Legislature is in a curious position.

Lawmakers are being asked to debate and vote on legislative proposals being made only because of the March shooting, even as some of the most important facts are kept secret.

Gov. Lee’s office says he’s called for the release of the manifesto, and it’s the Metro Nashville Police and the FBI keeping the lid on.

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BLUF
Maybe a few honest liberals might come out against this. But don’t hold your breath waiting on a major reaction from the Democratic establishment; unfortunately, this is the exact kind of thing they think the federal government should be doing. And that’s the truly scary part of this whole saga.

Leaked emails expose Biden White House’s attacks on the First Amendment

The “Twitter Files” reporting from last year exposed a disturbing collusion between Twitter executives and officials from the federal government to censor the public’s speech. But new revelations from Congress show that the Biden White House and Facebook have engaged in similar collusion.

On Thursday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who leads the House Judiciary Committee, released internal Facebook emails that show the Big Tech platform was explicitly pressured by the Biden administration to take down specific posts that the president’s allies disliked.

Michael Bloomberg’s ‘Trace’ outed as just another gun-control group
Everytown and the Trace have stunning similarities.

The Trace, the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control empire, wants the public to believe it’s an actual newsroom comprised of actual journalists. It’s a fiction they’ll go to great lengths to maintain.

The Trace calls itself “The only newsroom dedicated to covering gun violence.” Its staff refer to themselves as journalists, rather than anti-gun activists who are paid by Bloomberg to write propaganda.

Since the Trace was founded eight years ago, scores of newspapers, websites and other legacy media outlets have fallen victim to this ruse. Gannett’s flagship newspaper, USA Today, has collaborated with the Trace multiple times, and has even allowed Trace activists to produce and edit content, which appeared in the newspaper under a joint byline.

“We have partnered with more than 170 national and local media organizations,” the Trace says on its website. “We’re always looking to start new partnerships.”

One Trace activist, Jennifer Mascia, who describes herself as a “Senior news writer @TeamTrace,” bristled recently when her employer was compared to Everytown, another anti-gun group funded by Bloomberg.

“You know The Trace is not a gun control org. We don’t lobby. We don’t tell readers to support laws. We don’t publish our opinions. We are all journalists. None of us have ever worked in advocacy. Our backgrounds are easily searchable. Why do you persist with this myth?” Mascia tweeted Tuesday.

“Follow the bios. We all went to journalism school. The facts don’t support your claims,” Mascia tweeted when pressed.

Enter Rob Romano, an intelligence associate at the Firearms Policy Coalition.

Romano examined the IRS Form 990s for the Trace and Everytown and found a stunning similarity. Both nonprofits share the same president, John Feinblatt.

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It would have led the news if they could have claimed it was a “white supremacist” attack.

So That’s Why the Media Has Barely Covered the Fargo Police Ambush.

Officers Jake Wallin, Andrew Dotas and Tyler Hawes were shot by Barakat from about 15 to 20 feet away before they could even reach for their guns. Wallin was killed with Dotas and Hawes were wounded. It has since been revealed Barakat is originally from Syria was allowed into the United States via asylum in 2012.

A federal court just handed Biden’s Ministry of Truth a big defeat
Government bureaucracies and the Biden administration cannot be trusted

In a landmark decision that should have all Americans cheering, a Louisiana federal court recently upheld their First Amendment right to speak without being censored by the government. Judge Terry Doughty said the case, Missouri v. Biden, “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”

Judge Doughty issued a preliminary injunction forbidding numerous federal agencies, including the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as many individuals within the executive branch like White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, from communicating or meeting with: “[S]ocial-media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”

The injunction bans the feds from working with outside groups such as the Stanford Internet Observatory that induce social-media companies to suppress and delete “protected free speech.” And it even prevents the government from “notifying social-media companies to Be on The Lookout (‘BOLO’) for postings containing protected free speech.”

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a temporary stay of Judge Doughty’s injunction while the case is on appeal before the 5th Circuit, and said the appeal will be heard on an expedited basis.

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Nolte: NY Times Reports Coronavirus Deaths Overcounted by 30% … on Paragraph 17

The far-left New York Times quietly admitted this week that deaths from the coronavirus were overcounted by 30 percent.

Gee, another “right-wing conspiracy theory” is proven true…

The Times’ dishonesty is on full display even in the reporting of this breathtaking news.

Does this amazing revelation earn its own headline? Nope.

Does this amazing revelation sit at the top of the story? Nope.

Here’s how the propagandists at the Times bury the truth:

Headline: “A Positive Covid Milestone.”

Sub-headline: “In a sign that the pandemic really is over, the total number of Americans dying each day is no longer historically abnormal.”

And it is only after reading some 17 paragraphs where you will finally find the buried truth…

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

One-third.

We shut down the country, we closed schools, we bankrupted people, we bankrupted small businesses, we destroyed our economy, we transferred enormous wealth to the top one percent… All based on data that was off by a full third.

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Forbes Claims More than 330 ‘Mass Shootings’ This Year Using Misleading Data

Forbes pointed to misleading data and claimed on Monday there had been over 330 “mass shootings” in the United States so far in 2023.

They labeled their report “breaking” news.

Writing at Forbes, Ana Faguy relied on the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a pro-gun-control database which abandoned the long-standing definition of a “mass shooting” as four or more deaths in a single incident by a single gunman and replaced it with  “a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident.” GVA’s new definition allows drive-by shootings, targeted gang attacks, and other non-mass shootings to be counted as “mass shootings,” thus inflating the number of reported incidents.

For example, on Monday Baltimore WBALTV reported that GVA was still counting the April 15, 2023, Dadeville, Georgia, birthday party attack as a “mass shooting.” GVA is doing this although at least six people have been arrested in connection with the attack.

Yet Faguy quoted GVA numbers, saying, “There have been more than 330 mass shootings so far this year, according to data collected by the Gun Violence Archive.”

Breitbart News noted that The Hill relied on GVA numbers last year and ended up claiming over 600 mass shootings in the United States by Thanksgiving Day 2022.

On July 26, 2021, Breitbart News observed that the GVA is also able to report higher numbers of “mass shootings” because it lists defensive gun uses and officer-involved gun uses against criminals as “gun violence.”

Breitbart News pointed out on May 7, 2023, that GVA’s new definition allows drive-by shootings, targeted gang attacks, and other non-mass shootings to be counted as “mass shootings,” thus increasing the number of reported incidents. While President Joe Biden was claiming there had already been “roughly 200 mass shootings” in America for the year, a database maintained by the Associated Press/USA Today/Northeastern University showed there had actually been 19 such incidents in the United States from January 1, 2023, to May 2, 2023.

What They Mean by ‘Civility’
The New York Times raises no objection to murderous, racist rhetoric at a Common Cause rally.

The New York Times editorial page, a division of the New York Times Co., on Saturday endorsed Common Cause’s personal attack on Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. As we explained Friday, Common Cause, a Washington-based corporation, is complaining about Scalia and Thomas’s having joined Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, the 2010 decision that overturned a law criminalizing certain political speech by corporations.
As the Times explains, Common Cause implies that Scalia and Thomas had a conflict of interest:

The framers of our Constitution envisioned law gaining authority apart from politics. They wanted justices to exercise their judgment independently–to be free from worrying about upsetting the powerful and certainly not to be cultivating powerful political interests.

A petition by Common Cause to the Justice Department questioned whether Justices Scalia and Thomas are doing the latter. It asked whether the court’s ruling a year ago in the Citizens United case, unleashing corporate money into politics, should be set aside because the justices took part in a political gathering of the conservative corporate money-raiser Charles Koch while the case was before the court.

If the answer turns out to be yes, it would be yet more evidence that the court must change its policy–or rather its nonpolicy–about recusal.

The answer will not turn out to be yes, for Common Cause’s complaint is not only meritless but frivolous. Koch was not a party to the lawsuit. Citizens United, which brought the case to the court, is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, just like Common Cause.
Further, both Justices Scalia and Thomas, in joining the majority opinion, merely reaffirmed the legal positions that they, along with Justice Kennedy, had previously taken in dissenting from the precedents that Citizens United overturned: McConnell v. FEC (2003) and, in Justice Scalia’s case, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990, the year before Thomas joined the court). Thus it is preposterous to suggest that their purported association, years later, with “powerful political interests” influenced their decision in Citizens United.
Common Cause’s complaint does not even allege any actual impropriety on the justices’ part. In its letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the corporation asserts that “it appears” the justices “have participated in political strategy sessions.” This is based on promotional material for a conference called “Understanding and Addressing Threats to American Free Enterprise and Prosperity,” which says that “past meetings have featured such notable leaders as Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.”
What exactly did Justices Scalia and Thomas do at the conferences “it appears” they attended? Neither Common Cause nor the Times offers any evidence bearing on the question. But the Times makes another accusation against Justice Scalia that may provide a clue:

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Remember when Obammy’s communications office tried to pretend he was the anti-1984 guy?

Obama suggests ‘digital fingerprints’ to counter misinformation ‘so we know what’s true and what’s not true.’

Former President Barack Obama suggested in a new interview the development of “digital fingerprints” to combat misinformation and distinguish between true and misleading news for consumers.

Obama sat down with his former White House senior adviser David Axelrod for a conversation on the latter’s podcast, “The Axe Files,” on CNN Audio. During the interview, Axelrod noted he’s seen “misinformation, disinformation, [and] deepfakes” targeting Obama.

“As I’ve told people, because I was the first digital president when I left office, I was probably the most recorded, filmed, photographed human in history, which is kind of a weird thing,” responded Obama. “But just the odds are that I was. As a consequence, there’s a lot of raw material there.”

The former president added that the deepfakes — digitally manipulated images, audio or video that appear legitimate — started with a version of him dancing, “saying dirty limericks” and similar kinds of activity.

“That technology’s here now,” continued Obama, who warned about the issue getting worse moving forward. “So, most immediately we’re going to have all the problems we had with misinformation before, [but] this next election cycle will be worse.”

He then suggested “digital fingerprints” to discern truth from misinformation.

“And the need for us, for the general public, I think to be more discriminating consumers of news and information, the need for us to over time develop technologies to create watermarks or digital fingerprints so we know what is true and what is not true,” he said. “There’s a whole bunch of work that’s going to have to be done there, but in the short term, it’s really going to be up to the American people to kind of say.”

Obama and Axelrod went on to say that today many consumers are only viewing information from sources they are predisposed to agree with and will likely believe what they see.

“Obviously, we saw that during the vaccination stuff. So, I am concerned about it,” added Obama, referring to the COVID vaccine. “And I think the best we’re going to be able to do is to constantly remind people that this is out there.”

The former president said he thinks most people are now aware that “not everything that pops up on your phone is true,” but cautioned misinformation can be used to discourage people from voting by characterizing the system as rigged and corrupt.

“That can oftentimes advantage the powerful,” said Obama. “And I am worried about that kind of cynicism developing even further during the course of this next election.”

The interview came about six weeks after the Obama Foundation on World Press Freedom Day posted a recent video of the former president lecturing about “widespread disinformation” and the need for journalists to create “an information environment” to support democracy.

Last year, Obama announced that his foundation would be launching a new initiative to combat misinformation. Days later, Obama angered conservatives with a speech at Stanford University warning of the dangers of “disinformation.”

During the speech, Obama said, “All we see is a constant feed of content where useful factual information and happy diversions, and cat videos flow alongside lies, conspiracy theories, junk science, quackery, White supremacist, racist tracts, misogynist screeds.”

Critics were quick to point out that Obama promoted the debunked narrative that former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election and that Obama infamously won Politifact’s “Lie of the Year” in 2013 by telling Americans, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” referring to the Affordable Care Act.

More recently, the Biden administration came under fire for trying to start the now-defunct Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Homeland Security. Many Republicans argued such an initiative would act as a Ministry of Truth in a dystopian society by suppressing dissent under the guise of stopping misinformation.

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About this potential conflict of interest, retired Canadian colonel David Redman recently testified that legacy media outlets are “ministries of propaganda,” with multiple former mainstream media employees also making similar comments about their past employers.

Media blames ‘climate change’ for Canadian wildfires despite arrest of multiple arsonists
While the mainstream media continues to point to ‘climate change’ as the source of the wildfires, reports show that multiple people have been arrested in connection with dozens of intentionally set fires in the country.

(LifeSiteNews) — Despite the arrest of multiple arsonists, the mainstream media in Canada seems intent on attributing the nation’s recent wildfires to “climate change.”

As wildfires continue to spread across western, and now central and eastern Canada, burning forestland and homes, the mainstream media continues to imply that climate change is the main culprit, despite a growing number of reports showing that arsonists have been arrested for allegedly setting dozens of fires.

“Several arsonists have been arrested in the past weeks in different provinces for lighting forest fires,” People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier tweeted. “But the lying woke media and politicians keep repeating that global warming is the cause.” 

The severe nature of the wildfires has caused Canadians to wonder why they have spread so rapidly, especially as many of the affected areas are not typically impacted by wildfires of this degree or at this time of the year.

In the past months, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have arrested several arsonists who have been charged with lighting fires across several provinces including Nova Scotia, Yukon, British Columbia, and Alberta. The motive behind lighting the fires is unclear.  

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